The SEI helps advance software engineering principles and practices and serves as a national resource in software engineering, computer security, and process improvement. The SEI works closely with defense and government organizations, industry, and academia to continually improve software-intensive systems. Its core purpose is to help organizations improve their software engineering capabilities and develop or acquire the right software, defect free, within budget and on time, every time.

Research

Challenges of ULS systems

Fundamental gaps in our current understanding of software and software development at the scale of ULS systems present profound impediments to the technically and economically effective achievement of information superiority. These gaps are strategic, not tactical. They are unlikely to be addressed adequately by incremental research within established categories. Rather, we require a broad new conception of both the nature of such systems and new ideas for how to develop them. We will need to look at them differently, not just as systems or systems of systems, but as socio-technical ecosystems. We will face fundamental challenges in the design and evolution, orchestration and control, and monitoring and assessment of ULS systems. These challenges require breakthrough research.

Socio-adaptive systems focus on the effects of the human element in a system.
Specifically, socio-adaptive systems refer to large-scale systems comprising
distributed system resources such as processors and wireless networks. Humans
rely on these resources to carry out missions. Continuous change in the network
coupled with changing needs of missions supported by the system pose
challenges. Additionally, appropriate responses to changing needs rely on the
expressed needs of humans. Therefore, factors such as human self-interest must
be accounted for in system design.